


should have kept my heart

by sayingwhatiam



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28563525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sayingwhatiam/pseuds/sayingwhatiam
Summary: When the curse breaks, Will hears cheering in the streets, literal screams, horns honking, jubilation.When the curse breaks, Will collapses to the floor in his apartment, head pounding, chest empty.He remembers everything.(Mostly Canon Compliant, basically just a Will Scarlet character study of his life in Storybrooke)
Relationships: Belle/Knave of Hearts | Will Scarlet, Knave of Hearts | Will Scarlet/Red Queen | Anastasia
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	should have kept my heart

**Author's Note:**

> One of the scenes in this popped into my head fully formed, and I had to write the rest to go around that. It's technically canon compliant, depending on where you place Once Upon a Time in Wonderland in the overall timeline. For this, I've placed it after season 4, and had Will come to the LWM in the first curse. 
> 
> Basically self-indulgent simping for Will Scarlet.
> 
> Title from 'Kept' by Matt Nathanson.

When the curse breaks, Will hears cheering in the streets, literal screams, horns honking, jubilation.

When the curse breaks, Will collapses to the floor in his apartment, head pounding, chest empty.

He remembers everything.

He remembers his sister, the way he couldn’t save her. He remembers Anastasia’s eyes across the tiny pub, her smile when he made a joke, the softness of her lips in their first kiss. He remembers her choosing a crown over him. He remembers Cora ripping out his heart. He remembers feeling nothing for so long.

The rush of memories blinds him momentarily, makes his whole body freeze and ache and burn, and then it fades into that same familiar numbness.

His heart.

Will scrambles to his feet, suddenly remembering what’s in the weird box in the back of his closet that he somehow just ignored for twenty-eight years.

Twenty-eight years.

Time in Wonderland moves slower, differently, all at once or not at all, backward and forward and however it wants, but twenty-eight years is a long time. He has no idea how old Anastasia would be now. Not that it matters, of course, it’s just one of the new thoughts he has swirling around in his head demanding attention.

The cardboard box is right where he ignored it, a pair of sweatpants tossed over it like it’s nothing. And Will can _feel it_ \- the pull of his heart, so close, begging to be returned to where it belongs. It’s overflowing with feelings, and Will feels like he could reach out and touch them all. Love. Loss. Betrayal. Pain. So much pain.

The smaller box the heart is in hums in his hands as he walks back into his living room. It’s glowing, blinding him. So close.

He doesn’t know if he can put it back in himself, without magic, or if there’s even magic in this realm yet. He has to try though.

The heart feels alive and so fragile, warm in his hands. His chest feels emptier than ever, begging for it. He takes a breath and closes his eyes.

And he sees her. Anastasia. On the balcony, so high above him, choosing someone else. He sees all those days he spent praying she would come back to him and tell him she made a mistake and they would go home and live happily ever after. But she never came and he couldn’t bear it any longer

He can’t bear it now.

He doesn’t mean to punch a hole in the wall, fist cracking through the drywall, but he does. And he nestles the box containing his heart in there, and walks away.

He cleans it up later, after the thick purple fog covers the town, after he wanders around town and doesn’t find anyone he knows. He plasters over the hole, and thinks about mounting a television over it.

Eventually, he hangs a picture of Anastasia over it. A reminder to never forget what his heart did to him.

—-

Belle only stays over his place once before everything starts to fall apart, before Rumplestilstkin comes back into her life, but it’s one of the best nights Will has had in a very long time, through different realms and two curses and a lot of mistakes.

She tells him she feels safe with him and he kisses her so hard he’s dizzy. Her smile lights up his apartment and he wants to tell her how much he cares for her, how happy he is that she gave him a chance, but the words die on his tongue.

It all feels so hollow.

When he kissed Ana, his skin _hummed,_ colors became brighter, their heartbeats synced up to create the most beautiful music he had ever heard. When he kissed Ana, his heart pounded and swelled and ached to be somehow closer to her.

When he kisses Belle, it feels nice. Like he’s kissing a beautiful girl. Like a first kiss on a playground or a rebound in a corner at the back of The Rabbit Hole or a pub in Wonderland.

And the sex is good and they fall asleep in each other’s arms and Will doesn’t regret it, but Belle deserves more.

They make terrible pancakes together the next morning and he lifts her up on the counter to kiss the maple syrup off her tongue, and he knows that this should be one of those moments. Butterflies in his stomach, head over heels, chick flick type falling in love moments, but it’s nothing. It’s just Belle and his kitchen and fluorescent lighting that he’s pretty sure he stole from the hardware store.

When she leaves, he stand in front of the picture he drew of Anastasia for a long time.

“Who’s that?” Belle had asked when she noticed it the night before.

Will had shrugged. “My ex. Not quite on good terms right now.”

And Belle had laughed that humorless sad laugh and said she completely understood, and that was the end of that.

Will takes down the picture, pulling the dart out of the corner. He’s almost blinded by the bright red light and covers it with his hand, shutting out the glow.

He can feel his own heartbeat in his palm.

It would be so easy. He could just take it to Emma and she would put it right back in, no questions asked, all a days work for the savior/sheriff/pain-in-his-arse, and Belle would have the man she deserved. A man who puts her first, before power or magic or revenge. A man who makes her feel safe and loved and trusted.

He counts his own heartbeats. One, two, three, four.

_“I’d rather feel nothing than feel like this.”_

Belle deserves better.

Will can’t be better.

He hears his own heartbeat in his head every time they kiss. It just hurts.

—-

“I want to see where you lived all those years” Ana whispers one night.

They’ve pulled all the pillows and blankets from their gigantic feather bed out onto the balcony, and they lie there, wrapped in each other, watching the stars. Will pointed out all the ones he named Anastasia, his fingers tangled in her loose blonde hair, and then he said that he sometimes found himself looking at the stars in Storybrooke and wondering if they were the same, if any of them were named Anastasia.

She asked him why he would do that if he didn’t love her, didn’t have his heart, and he kissed her, “I never forgot you” a whisper between their lips.

So then she asks to visit Storybrooke, and part of him misses it, so he agrees. Surely by now, Emma Swan has defeated all the evil, and the White Queen and King of Wonderland are definitely past due for a visit to Snow White and Prince Charming.

He tells her all about the curse - she knew some of it, what Cora told her before she left Wonderland with Hook so many years ago - and the town full of heroes. He tells her about Belle and finding Robin Hood and the Merry Men again and how he left during some terrible storm that might’ve been all of the Dark One energy getting released into the universe, but it was probably fine now.

Ana plays with the wedding band on his left hand while he tells the stories, and for a moment, it felt like she had been there for all of it, in his loneliest moments.

The White Rabbit makes them a portal and they jump through, hand in hand like they did so many years ago.

Storybrooke looks the same but different, and apparently it’s only been two years since he left, even though they’re positive they’ve seen way over seven hundred sunrises together. Granny’s is still there, although Ruby is gone. He avoids Mr. Gold’s pawnshop, but one of the dwarves tells him in a stage-whisper while he’s ordering him and Ana a signature hot cocoa to go, that Belle had his son, who grew up to be evil and then became a baby again, somehow.

Ana laughs, charmed by all of it. To Will, it’s normal. To Ana, who spent more years in Wonderland than anyone can count, a small town in Maine is the strangest place in all the realms.

Hook is the one who tells him Robin is dead, after quick introductions on the sidewalk in front of the diner. Will missed the funeral by about sixteen months.

It’s the first loss, other than Anastasia, that he’s experienced since having his heart back inside his body, and it almost floors him. Ana holds him upright, and Hook offers supportive words, tells him, “he died a hero, mate,” but it just _hurts._

He lets Ana guide him back to his old apartment, less of a tour guide now and more like the walking wounded. Once inside, they go to the bedroom, and Ana peels off his jacket before pushing him down onto the mattress. She unties his boots in silence and crawls in bed next to him, resting her head on his chest like she always does. His heart beats steadily for her, like it has since the day they met, whether within his body or without.

But today it aches, too. Today, it makes him remember why he begged Cora to rip it out of his body.

“Do you wish you didn’t have your heart?” Ana asks, her voice so soft, shaking. As if she can read his mind.

He’s silent for a long time, not wanting to lie to her, and he hates how tense she is next to him. He rubs circles on her back, feeling the tension melt away, letting his hands remind her how much he loves her until his brain can find the words.

“I know what it’s like to not feel. There’s no pain, but there’s no joy either.” He nudges her until she looks up at him, her bright blue eyes shining in the low light of his old bedroom, the bedroom he lived in when he didn’t have her, when he didn’t even know who she was. “I wouldn’t trade this for anything.”

They kiss, then, and he sees fireworks, tastes magic on her tongue, feels earthquakes in his bones. They kiss, and he feels everything.


End file.
